Arizona immigration debate puts Sheriff Paul Babeu in spotlight

Seemingly overnight, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu went from a local lawman to a national figure.

Outspoken in his support of tough immigration enforcement, he has appeared on TV news programs dozens of times and is fast becoming a known face in political circles.

Critics view him as a calculated politician inserting himself into a heated debate for political gain, prompting one official to quip that Babeu is "unavoidable for comment."

Supporters say Babeu is motivated by an unflappable desire to stand up for what is right, by the principles that have been pushing him to seek a role on the political stage since he was a teenager.

At 41, Babeu has spent more than half of his life in and out of politics. The lawman began his career running for office, not walking a beat, and seized the Pinal County sheriff's job on a campaign to oust government corruption.

But his starring role came suddenly, on an April night after one of his deputies had been wounded in a desert shootout with suspected drug smugglers.

The timing of the incident couldn't have been more explosive. Arizona's governor had just signed Senate Bill 1070, the controversial but popular immigration-enforcement law. Babeu said the gunfight was the perfect example of why Arizona needed the law - and more border enforcement.

Soon, he was a fixture on cable TV news and starring in wide-running primary-election ads for Sen. John McCain.

The sudden prominence of an Arizona sheriff in the national scene brought inevitable comparisons to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has been welcomed for years on national talk shows as "America's toughest sheriff." Arpaio and Babeu have been political allies since Babeu campaigned for a sheriff post of his own.

Last week cast those comparisons in a new light. An internal memo emerged from Arpaio's office, accusing top deputies of unethical and illegal conduct. Arpaio forwarded the claims to Babeu to determine if an investigation was warranted, and critics quickly questioned whether Babeu would provide an unbiased assessment of Arpaio's staff.

Meanwhile, the national immigration debate isn't going away, and neither is Babeu.

Peter Abair, an opponent of Babeu's in a Massachusetts GOP primary more than a decade ago, said his former rival seems to have found his niche out West.

"He's a very driven individual who, once he gets focused on something, is a tough guy to knock off track, and that has served him very well," Abair said.

Political calling

At 17, Babeu was a shy teen studying to be an electrician at a technical high school in North Adams, Mass., in the northwestern corner of the state.

The second youngest of 11 children, Babeu often talked politics with his father. Raymond Babeu was considered a gadfly in local circles, ever ready to share his opinion and question public officials.

He encouraged his reluctant son to do the same about a City Council attempt to double its members' pay. Paul Babeu said it bothered him that they were asking for raises while many local families were experiencing financial hardship.

"He said, 'Well, if you don't like it, go down there and tell them you don't like it,' " Babeu recalled of his father. Knees shaking and voice quivering, he answered a call for public comment during a council meeting.

"They thought it was a big hoot," Babeu said. "Their response to me (was) almost like, 'Hey, kid, thanks for your opinion. Have a nice day. Be on your way.' "

Fueled by anger over their reaction, Babeu took out an initiative petition to place the pay raise before voters. He spent hours collecting signatures after school and on weekends. Ultimately, the issue didn't make the ballot, but the council approved a smaller pay increase than initially proposed.

The experience ignited a new desire in Babeu. He ran for North Adams City Council and, at 18, became the youngest candidate to win a spot on the governing board. He served a two-year term but was not re-elected.

Babeu kept pursuing political office. After running an unsuccessful campaign for state Senate, he was hired by the then-treasurer of Massachusetts, Joe Malone.

"I was impressed by him then, and I continue to be impressed by him," Malone said. "I always thought that Paul someday would be a great political star in Massachusetts, and our loss is Arizona's gain."

Two failed runs for mayor of his hometown later, Babeu said, he decided to follow a lifelong dream of becoming a police officer. And he wanted to do it in a warm climate.

After a visit to his parents' home near Queen Creek, he decided on the Chandler Police Department. In 2003, he graduated from the police academy.

Inspired by a drunk

Just after midnight on Sept. 24, 2007, Babeu was startled awake by a crash.

A drunken driver had struck his vehicle, which was parked outside his San Tan Valley home. Shirtless, he ran outside with a gun in his waistband to find a man trying to push a car out from beneath Babeu's Jeep.

The man reeked of alcohol, Babeu said, and records later showed his license was suspended for a previous DUI.

Babeu called 911, and two Pinal County sheriff's deputies responded. One put the man in the back of a patrol car and said he was giving him a ride home. Babeu was flabbergasted.

"This guy should have been arrested," Babeu said. "I saw this as a Chandler officer, and I'm like, 'I can't believe this stuff.' "

He says the incident helped propel him toward the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.

"Talk about being motivated (to run) and then hearing countless stories about where we were as a county because of a lack of good leadership, a lack of good training, and a lack of support and direction," Babeu said.

It made sense to Chandler police Detective Cassandra Cocking when Babeu told her and other Chandler police union representatives about getting into the sheriff's race because of his desire to right perceived wrongs.

She recalled Babeu helping a fellow former officer win a wrongful-termination suit against the city, as well as his open support of a Chandler police sergeant who was arrested after his dog died when left in a hot patrol car.

"He knew he was putting himself out there, but he was doing what he thought was right," Cocking said.

Babeu ran for sheriff on a platform that highlighted "ethical lapses" on the part of Pinal County leaders, citing former County Manager Stanley Griffis, who was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison on a theft conviction for using his position to steal about $600,000 in public funds.

It's a fight Babeu has continued even after his election.

In April 2009, he called for the county recorder to resign for knowingly hiring a felon later accused of stealing customer identities while working at the Recorder's Office. Albert Robbs, 53, was charged with assisting in a criminal syndicate. The case is ongoing.

Recorder Laura Dean-Lytle had hired Robbs, her daughter's then-boyfriend, in May 2003, nearly a year following his release from state prison, where he served more than two years for theft.

With such incidents, "A piece of the trust that our honest employees have earned from residents is lost," Babeu wrote in an opinion piece in The Republic last year. "The good work done by our government employees is needlessly called into question by the bad deeds of people like this."

About a dozen of Babeu's own employees have been fired as a result of his efforts to root out corruption in Pinal County, including a jail commander who lied about cocaine use on a previous job application and a sergeant accused of not properly impounding evidence.

Now, Babeu is investigating the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and facing questions about his own motives.

A top aide to Arpaio has accused the sheriff's second-in-command, Chief Deputy David Hendershott, and two allies of years of misconduct and mismanagement.

Two Maricopa County supervisors on Friday said the investigation should be conducted by a neutral agency. Board Chairman Don Stapley and Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said that having an investigation supervised by Babeu would cloud the probe because he is Arpaio's close political ally.

The Pinal County Sheriff's Office issued a statement about the MCSO case, saying Babeu will "ensure that a fair and thorough investigation is completed." "Sheriff Babeu believes in transparency in government."

Former Chandler colleague Cocking agreed.

"If he thinks something is wrong, he's not going to turn the other cheek and walk away from it because it might be uncomfortable," Cocking said of Babeu. "He's not the type to just walk away."

Border warrior

One week after Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona's new immigration law, Pinal County Sheriff's Deputy Louie Puroll was wounded in a dramatic shootout with suspected drug smugglers in the desert south of Maricopa.

Soon, there were questions about his office's handling of the incident. Early reports about some details had been inaccurate, and the department's internal investigation was called into question.

But immigration already had become Babeu's signature issue.

Media outlets big and small called on Babeu to weigh in on the debate almost daily.

"This is deep into our state, and here we have a paramilitary squad operating much like the tactics of those that we use in the military," Babeu said in an interview in June with Fox News on the program "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren."

"And that's very concerning. This gunbattle went on for over 10 minutes. And for them to take this kind of aggressive posture we're seeing a lot more in Arizona, and this is really part of what's happening out here."

Babeu says that he's been talking about illegal immigration - which he calls "the most serious public safety threat" - since his campaign days in Arizona but that people are now taking notice since the state is in the national spotlight.

The sheriff said he adds value to the conversation as a lawman who is dealing with human and drug smuggling and as a former member of the Army National Guard.

He retired this month after 20 years in the Guard, with some of that time spent commanding troops during Operation Jump Start on the Arizona border near Yuma in 2006.

Bill Richardson, a retired Mesa police officer and Republic contributor, said he thinks Babeu's openness to media exposure has more to do with political ambition than law enforcement.

"I think he's extremely ambitious," Richardson said. "I think he's got a proven style. He's become the darling of Fox News, and I think what we're seeing here is exactly what we saw of Joe Arpaio: small-town sheriff all of the sudden becomes a national celebrity."

Babeu's message from a national platform has changed since the days when he oversaw the Chandler police union.

In October 2007, he said that officers should not be responsible for enforcing immigration law. His stance was in alignment with Valley police chiefs, including Chandler's, who argued that the responsibility would divert police resources.

"As police officers, we understand our leadership's position because we are already overtaxed," Babeu told The Republic in October 2007.

Now, Babeu says that over his time in Arizona, he has seen illegal immigration "grow to become one of the most important issues to law enforcement."

"You cannot divorce or separate illegal immigration from our job, as much as people have tried to do that, say this is not our job or responsibility," Babeu said. "In the end, it is not our primary job or responsibility, yet we cannot (ignore it), especially in the absence of the federal government doing fully their job."

Babeu has called for federal assistance to battle violence associated with illegal immigration and drug smuggling, while at the same time asking the county to fund an anti-smuggling unit of his own.

He also has given his blessing to a private group's efforts to raise money to equip Pinal deputies with semi-automatic rifles.

Babeu said government officials have been dismissive of increasing smuggling activity in Pinal County. "We're tired here of being made to look like kooks that are making things up" he said. "Our citizens have a right to know there's a threat here."

Pinal County Supervisor Pete Rios said Babeu's claims about cartel violence and his willingness to talk about it in the national media has drawn "very negative" attention to Pinal.

In that way, Rios said, Babeu has become "unavoidable for comment, sometimes over issues that we could resolve if we could just sit down and talk about them."

"We are trying to encourage economic development in our county, and when people like our governor, Jan Brewer, talk about beheadings in the desert, that's not helpful," Rios said. "When Sheriff Babeu makes reference to the drug cartel controlling parts of Arizona in Pinal County, that is not helpful. I wish that a lot of this would stop."

Nevertheless, it's appeared to work for Babeu and politicians who have received his endorsement. Most notable is his appearance in a campaign spot for Sen. John McCain, which has become known as the "danged fence" ad.

Some in the GOP had portrayed the senator as weak on border security, and the ad - in which Babeu said "Senator, you're one of us" - was mocked but helped build McCain's credibility.

Said Constantin Querard, a Republican political consultant: "It's a testament to his 'rising star' status that John McCain needs Sheriff Babeu more than Sheriff Babeu needs John McCain."